the corpse in the poem
the corpse enters the poem
in the first line, he is obtrusive
though he will do nothing
at all and say nothing,
he will just make implicitly
explicit that he is you
and me, a while later, he is just us
decaying here
and the corpse will leave the poem
in this next and final stanza
and stay with us a minute, maybe,
as we remember dismembering -
to fall apart at last,
the corpse will be us, then,
and we his temporary
past
David McLean
Details of McLean's three available full length books, various chapbooks, and almost 800 poems in or forthcoming at over 330 places online or in print over the last couple of years, are at his blog at htpp://mourningabortion.blogspot.com. A new chapbook of dead snakes is due at Rain over Bouville in Feb 2009, and another is coming from Poptritus Press in the summer sometime. A novella Henrietta forgets is forthcoming from Isms Press. Round the beginning of next year a large anthology of his poetry is also forthcoming with Epic Rites Publications.
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